i) The Roots
ii) The Uneventful Years
iii) The Stairway To Flash
iv) After The Summer Holidays, 2004
v) Post-New Year's Eve, 2004
vi) February 2005 and beyond
vii) Summary
The Roots:
If you have read the 'about barnoproductions'
flash movie above, this bit is similar. The records
began when I was in Trafalgar
Junior School, 1996/97. I had a purple folder,
with a chicken printed on it. I scrawled stuff all
over it, and still have it to this day, but it was
last used as a folder in 2003, for a Design and Technology
project where I had to make a clock. Here is a photo
of it:
You can just about
make out the 'BP - barnoproductions' written on it,
but unfortunately, when I tried to scan the inside,
it didn't come out well. It had a comical picture of
ex-goalkeeper, Bruce
Grobelaar amongst other stuff.
The
Uneventful Years
Throughout Junior School, that folder was used,
and barnoproductions became my little 'company', where
I made mainly birthday and Christmas cards for family
and friends. I could scan one of them, but it would
be a recent one, and it would be too good and burn
your eyes with glory :P In early Secondary School,
I wanted to make a website, and I designed many and
failed, until I think in 2000, where I made one at
http://super_barno.tripod.com, but this was removed
by Tripod, I think because after I forgot about it
and left it, it was probably just sitting there for
18 months, and thus removed.
I had many other websites,
'barnozone' and 'Chasing Squirrels With Sticks' included.
I still use the barnozone webspace, to leave me with
more space on my server. Anyway, around this time I
hadn't used Flash before, and made .GIF animations
instead. They were rubbish in comparison, and I have
recently seen far better ones. Click
here to view one of them.
The
Stairway to Flash
In the Summer of 2003, I got 'Studio MX - Educational
Version', an older version of the one shown in the
below picture:
At the beginning,
I concentrated on using Dreamweaver, to make websites.
I got very useful training from John
Bowling, a web designer, who my dad knows, and
I made a practise website on Dinosaurs.
After that, I started in Flash. You can see one of
the first Flash Animations I did by clicking
here. It wasn't very good, but I moved on to other
projects, including "The Terrifying Truth About
McDonalds". In this I didn't know any complicated
techniques, and the majority of it was done frame-by-frame.
Here is a shot:
Starting in October/November
2003, I went on a 19-week Flash, Dreamweaver and Fireworks
Web Design Course at Richmond
Adult Community College. By the end of this course,
I had been able to grasp more complex Flash techniques,
and also learnt more Dreamweaver and Fireworks knowledge.
I started building a website called 'Haphazard', in
dribs and drabs, and although it never was finished,
I got a very useful template for my barnoproductions site
from it. All of the glowing blue outline of this site
(with the exception of some later additions) was originally
red, and part of the 'Haphazard' site.
In July of 2004, as
'Haphazard' was still in production, me and my good
friend Tommy formed Smoking Chimney Productions U.K.
(scpuk). I gave him Flash on his computer, and the
idea was to be a group of animators, working and sharing
ideas together. Most of the time on that fateful July
afternoon was spent on doing the original scpuk intro,
but then within 2 or 3 days, we had produced 'Ghastly
Granny', which is still to this day on the site.
After this incredible 'success', Arthur, mon frere,
joined the scpuk action.
After
the Summer Holidays, 2004
Back to school, in my final year before college,
so I had to spend more time on school, yet still I
wanted to do a flash project that suppassed my previous
ones. Then, as I listened to "Wipeout" by
The Surfaris, I decided I had to make an animation
with the music in. For some slightly obscure reason,
I thought it would go really well with a Farmer chasing
a Pig, so I made that, bit by bit over about 3 weeks
and the end result: BACON?:
Farmer vs. Pig. Although it didn't get on to Newgrounds,
it was enough to kick-start me building my site, and
I put it on the web, although it was quite empty.
I made the flash buttons
for the side, but the flash page was incredibly empty.
I got to grips with the ol' digital camera and made
two "Anti-Animal Cruelty" advertisements: Ad
#1 and Ad #3 (and Ad
#2, which is deleted forever - it was only Ad #1 with
a barrel of oil instead.) I made a 'Flash page menu',
which now had Ghastly Granny, BACON?:
Farmer vs. Pig, Ad #1, Ad
#3 and also Rock-O-Matic and Timer
2, two other experimental Flash pieces. For no
reason, I made Average
Alvin and after my Mock Exams, in the Christmas
Holidays, SCPUK got together on call of myself, to
make a 'film'. It ended up being the biggest underdog
success story - it was quite funny, some of it wasn't
but it didn't matter. It became known as Part Alpha,
being the first part of two more to come, Beta and
Gamma, because we just had jokes making them. In fact
we continue to make them to this day, and it is no
long a 'trilogy' as originally planned!
Post-New
Year's Eve, 2004
On an average New Year's Eve, in good spirit,
I 'finished off' a project I had started, Elephant
Game 2. This was all based on a one level game
I made, called 'The Elephant Game', which was an experiment
using buttons. After I got a few people to test it,
and got a general thumbs up, I polished it off, and
on to Newgrounds it went... and stayed. I was pretty
surprised, and it got a score of around 2.2/5 and since
then has moved on to almost 3.2/5. I was so pleased
I made 'Elephant Game
3: DNFTA' which did even better. Meanwhile, I had
made my site similar to how it is now, except with
the old header, the Flash page being the main attraction.
I had made the Flash menu that you see today, and more
and more things were going on it. Then came a SCPUK
collaboration, 'In A Nutshell', containing a version
of B?:FvP amongst
one of my personal favourites, Bambi: WW2.
February
2005 and beyond
I wanted to do something different, but fun, so
I came up with the ideal of a 'family' quiz show (by
'family' I mean suitable for all). This one idea not
only lead to SMASH!: The Knockout
Quiz Show, which reached my first ever 'decent'
score after submission on Newgrounds (3.05/5.00), but
was the beginning of a (at time of print) 6 part
series of quiz shows, including SMASH!:
100, with 100 questions and SMASH!
Champions, with the champions of the first 4 shows
amongst many other things. All 6 were made and completed
in February 2005, by the end of which my site had accumulated
over 3,600 page views, links to it on Greek and Swedish sites,
and visitors worldwide (even one from Qatar!).
I hit 5,000 page views
in March and accelerated way into the 6,000 mark after
SCPUK was made Newgrounds'
featured artist! Between then and March, it had
died down a bit, but with projects like 'SMASH!: Reloaded'
underway, it was sure to rise again in the future,
and a 'stagnant period' that was expected between March
19, 2005 until July 2005, because of my (and the majority
of SCPUK's) upcoming GCSE examinations in May/June
did happen. Throughout April, a steady lot of visitors
came to the site, around 1,000 page views in total,
but this 'stagnant' period ended and in fact, the page
views in May were at a record level, and the record
was absolutely smashed in June, where SMASH!: 100 was
featured on a few sites. but 4Games and 123spill.no generated
a huge total of page views between them! In the
beginning of July 2005, we had over 80,000 page views.
Still, one thing that you still should do is sign
up to the forum, because there you will
be able to ask questions and get up to date with the
latest news, and sign up to the mailing list on the contact page.
We hope you are looking forward to the future of barnoproductions,
SCPUK and this website. Watch this space!
Summary
Since beginning as nothing more than a word on
the back of a folder, barnoproductions has grown to
having it's own website, with a forum, over 20 Flash
animations/games and being part of the legendary animation
group, Smoking Chimney Productions. I cannot thank
you enough for your support! Email
me if you have read this and have any questions!
Awards
Click here to view our Flash movie/game awards
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